Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Of Heroism and Hit Points part 2

There are a few things about the D&D rules that bother me. Like the more levels you have the more damage you can take but the tougher you are to heal. Or no matter how good at hitting things you are you never get better at defending yourself. There are more but I don't need to go on. My purpose has been to take another look at the rules with a mind to change my perceptions about them. My goal is to play the game as written with minimal house-ruling. Here is how I intend to do that. By treating Hit Points as morale and defense ability.

When you wear armor your opponent can't just swing wildly at you. They have to aim for weak spots. Hence your AC is their target number. If they are on target (a successful roll) they roll for "damage". The damage they cause is you dodging, ducking, or blocking with a weapon or shield. Because no one is perfect this number is subtracted from your hit point total. This represents a general wearing down of your skill and luck. When you reach zero or go beyond, you have made a critical mistake and your enemy kills you. There I think I just explained how D&D combat works as written without changing anything. Except for magic, traps, falling and poison.

The following only applies to my game and does not apply to D&D in general. Because armour doesn't protect from those things there are no rules for them. I will house rule that they do wounds directly to the character. Wounds would be based on the Constitution stat and damage taken off of it until death at zero. Magic, falling and poison will do stated damage to Con. Weapon damage rolls will 1, 2 or 3 D6 based on type. Healing spells will restore Con damage as will rest as stated in the rules. Hit points can be recovered fully after one nights rest as they do not represent actual damage at all.

There are most likely things I have missed but there it is. Keep this model of combat in mind and the rules make more sense. They are far from perfect but workable.